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Here's an “anti-best of” from R.E.M. Twenty tracks never released as singles, chosen from the official discography (no B-sides or covers, which we might tackle in another OndaTop), left out of best-ofs and compilations, and neglected in live sets. It's too easy — and it's already been done — to celebrate the huge hits and universally acclaimed masterpieces that sit at the center of documentaries, get regular radio play, and top the charts on YouTube and Spotify views and streams. We're making room for creations that aren't as famous, but are just as beautiful and intriguing. Passages that are sometimes dissonant, far from the “mother sound” so impeccably defined by Peter Buck: “Minor key, midtempo, enigmatic, semi-folk-rock-balladish things”. A subjective and evocative “anti-best”, in the spirit of an “anti-concert” (“Live At The Olympia” and its accompanying documentary, aptly titled “This Is Not A Show”) made up of experimental moments, the odd anthem “in the corner”, and glimpses that offer a different point of view. As time marks more than ten years since their breakup, we found yet another excuse to dig through one of the richest catalogs of treasures (hidden ones too) in the history of rock.

20. The Worst Joke Ever

It's easy to quote the epic lines from the big classics — try instead quoting “Boy In The Well” the way Jo Nesbo does at the start of chapter 4 of “The Snowman”. While there's often debate over which is the band's one true masterpiece, fans and critics are probably much quicker and more unanimous in picking the most “forgettable” moment. I'll never use the word “bad” for anything R.E.M. made, but “Around The Sun”, released after two albums that weren't exactly rocking or energetic, shows the strain of a long gestation in the studio that left even its makers unsatisfied. A record marked by opposition to the Bush presidency, sealed by the “Vote For Change” tour with Bruce Springsteen and Pearl Jam (and one wonders what R.E.M. would have made under Trump, given Stipe's public statements on the matter). “Around The Sun” runs too long and, in places, feels tired and blurry. Listened to again after all this time, the most forgettable tracks still don't hold up, but in some moments you can hear the full intensity of the trio, as in “Final Straw”, with lyrics against the Iraq war, or “The Worst Joke Ever”. A cryptic track (could that 1954 mentioned in the lyrics be tied to American history?), with a simple, acoustic sound and a crescendo ready to burst into the chorus.

19. Houston

After “Around The Sun”, it wasn't just the fans who wanted something more immediate and powerful — R.E.M. themselves did too. Time for a change: out went Pat McCarthy, excellent at polishing and shaping the sound but less adept at capturing the songs' most vital qualities, and in came Jacknife Lee. In that half-hour called “Accelerate”, the pauses are few but significant: “Until The Day Is Done” (whose roots can be traced back to the demos for “Monster”) and “Houston”. The latter, dominated by a heavy synth, opens with “If the storm doesn't kill me, the government will”, which three years later, in “Oh My Heart”, would become “The storm didn't kill me, the government changed”.

18. Every Day Is Yours To Win

At the start of the '90s, when people wanted a new “Everybody Hurts” or “Man On The Moon”, the band answered with “What's The Frequency, Kenneth?”. Having grown used to distorted guitars and the look of the Monster Tour, along came “E-Bow The Letter”. R.E.M. stayed true and consistent to their style and their unconventional choices: which is the only album on which they quote themselves? Obviously the last one, with Stipe on the cover waving goodbye to everyone after thirty years of a glorious career. “Collapse Into Now” is an anthology of the R.E.M. sound: the more electric, fast-paced side, the more acoustic side, the vomit song “Blue” — an updated version of “E-Bow The Letter” (fittingly, Patti Smith returns) — and that trademark jingle-jangle woven through “Every Day Is Yours to Win”. In the lyrics, Stipe plays with the theme of farewell and speaks — incredibly! — plainly and directly to the listener, addressing them as “you”, even sending out optimistic messages (“That Someone Is You”). In the lullaby-like meta-song “Every Day Is Yours To Win”, the singer echoes a few lines from “Drive” (“And the tick tock clock/ With the rock and the roll”) and declares:

Every day is new again

Every day is yours to win

And that’s how heroes are made

Any guesses who the heroes are?

17. You

A twisted, obsessive song. A desert-dry guitar riff, a stride sunk in quicksand, that dragging, relentless climb toward the chorus, propped up by the indecipherable sound that the finest R.E.M.-ologists still argue about. Stipe finally lays bare his obsessions with the Other (often a relationship partner) that haunt Monster:

I love you crazy, just keep on

I love you madly, just keep on

You wipe my lips, you turn me on

My attentions are turned to you

16. Half A World Away

Among the contenders for the title of REM's best-selling album was “Fiction”. Stipe, for the first time, became an explicit narrator (as "explicit" as an impressionist like him can be), setting out to tell the many faces of love. On “Out Of Time” we find the thoughts of a man about to become a father (“Me In Honey”, a surprising set-closer at the 2005 Rome show at the Stadio Olimpico) or the bond between mother and son (“Belong”). But what dominates is the "dark side" of love: “Losing My Religion”, “Low” (“I skipped the part about love/ It seems so silly and low”), right through to the "saddest sunset I've ever seen" of “Half A World Away”, the quintessence of the album's acoustic sound. Peter Buck on mandolin, bass played by drummer Bill Berry, and Mike Mills moving from bass to organ. A poignant loneliness fuels the darker side of a record hastily filed away as REM's sugary pop album. Yes, it's true, there's “Shiny Happy People”, but let's not forget “Texarkana” and - perhaps the most beautiful song of all - “Country Feedback”, never released as a single but avenged over the years through best-ofs and tours.

15. Saturn Return

One of the most disorienting passages in REM's discography. The first song Buck ever wrote on piano, a black hole within an album that's a little too sunny, “Reveal”. An alien, distant sound that gradually dissolves in the face of the cryptic lyrics and Stipe's spine-tingling vocal performance. The singer would perform it solo in 2011 at the Tibet House Annual Benefit Concert at Carnegie Hall in New York.

14. Welcome To The Occupation

From 1987 we dig up “Welcome To The Occupation”, paired with the equally magnificent “Disturbance At The Heron House” on “Live At The Olympia”. While “Lifes Rich Pageant” is steeped in environmental activism (as well as Stipe's "return to life" after the dark times he went through during “Fables Of The Reconstruction”), “Document” is where the band's political side definitively surfaces (“Finest Worksong” above all). “Welcome To The Occupation” moves within a magical balance, where the sweet yet enveloping sounds of Buck's Rickenbacker carry the singer toward a marvelous peak at the song's heart.

13. She Just Wants To Be

One of the reasons behind this ranking? I believe REM often chose not to release their finest songs as singles - especially when it came to albums not exactly considered masterpieces. Fair enough with “Imitation Of Life”, and with the aching “I'll Take The Rain” too, but why not release this track as a representative of “Reveal”, alongside “All The Way To Reno (You're Gonna Be A Star)”? Its splendid live versions (the two famous German ones from Wiesbaden and Cologne) return it to us in all its greatness.

12. Shaking Through

“Murmur” retains every molecule of that enigmatic, fascinating aura that made it a cornerstone - as well as a milestone - of alternative rock. Credit goes to the production of Don Dixon and Mitch Easter, complete with hidden tricks and sounds, and to four twenty-somethings from the South who know their folk roots well but also know how to sound sharp. And above all, they know how to play on the allure of mystery and enigma, thanks to a young singer whose words are sometimes indecipherable (because even he doesn't know what he's singing). Like echoes from a distant yet still living world, “Murmur” is often marked by shattered flashes of childhood, puzzle pieces whose blurred words, assembled purely for their sound, strike straight at the heart. “Perfect Circle” is the emblematic case, while the less famous but equally striking “Shaking Through” carries just as much weight: in the chorus and in lines like “Could it be that one small voice/ Doesn't count in the room” one senses the recollection of a fond memory from the past, but anyone - and this is the beauty of it - can hear something entirely different in it.

11. Try Not To Breathe

A golden phase shadowed by the grey outlines of death. The funereal concept of “Automatic For The People” here takes the shape of an elderly man, probably ill (“I need something to breathe”), coming to terms with a life that's ending. Yet “This decision is mine” hints at the possibility of a choice that might get ahead of the inevitable course of events. In “R.E.M. Fiction”, David Buckley calls it the most beautiful song the band ever released that never came out as a single. On “Automatic” it perhaps has to compete with “Monty Got A Raw Deal”, but a track like this shows just what level the four musicians from Athens were operating at in 1992.

10. Sad Professor

With “Up”, REM confront the worst of crises. The documentary “Falls To Climb” captures their unprecedented approach to songwriting, with the trio ready to reinvent themselves by embracing unfamiliar elements like electronics. The "three-legged dog", now missing the load-bearing pillars of Bill Berry, Scott Litt and Jefferson Holt, starts from scratch, reinventing itself in the studios of San Francisco. In the aforementioned documentary we can watch the performance of “Sad Professor”, with Mills on acoustic guitar and Buck on bass. “Up” has one great virtue: it doesn't sound like an REM album, and yet it's an album only REM could have made. The tracklist offers songs in line with tradition, tinged by machines (“Daysleeper”); unprecedented vistas (“The Airportman”, “Hope”, “Why Not Smile”), soft, melodic and romantic pop passages (from “Suspicion” to “Diminished/I'm Not Over You”) and above all a darker thread, a sequence of moments where Stipe (who at the time was battling "writer's block") gives us “The Apologist”, “Walk Unafraid” and a sad professor grappling with love and alcoholism. “Sad Professor” is initially "just" voice and acoustic guitar, and the singer's voice reaches remarkable heights in the chorus.

9. Low

“Out Of Time” excels at making the most of contrast. The tracklist opens with a critique of radio, immediately followed by the ultimate hit (perhaps they already knew as much, when deciding the running order?), before plunging straight into “Low”, continuing the album's celebration of its "dark side". A grim, murky record, like the hypothetical soundtrack to a southern-gothic noir. Steel guitar strings, anguished strings, and a sinister organ, with Stipe nothing short of unforgettable as the song tears itself open at its climax. It's followed by the diametrically opposite “Near Wild Heaven”, sung by Mills.

8. Green Grow The Rushes

Echoing Christian gospel, on “Green Grow The Rushes” the granite pulse of Mike Mills' bass (with echoes of beloved Pylon) blends beautifully with the sounds conjured up by Buck: one guitar weaves its distinctive riffs, the other sustains the sweet refrain with steady persistence. Toward the end, the bassist also appears in one of his usual, invaluable vocal supports. Well worth revisiting in the live version from the now-historic German concert of February 10, 1985.

7. Camera

There's no shortage of pathos on “Reckoning”, the second act of 1984 with a painting by Howard Finster on its cover. The rough edges are smoothed out, and Buck's work on the Rickenbacker becomes more pronounced. On the other side of the ocean, an equally young and talented guitarist would use the very same instrument to accompany the lyrics and voice of a singer named Robert Patrick Morrissey. “Reckoning” is at times almost euphoric: after all, these were the same guys who, twelve months earlier, had landed Rolling Stone's album of the year! “Hairborcoat”, “Second Guessing”, “Pretty Persuasion”, and the travelogue of “Little America” sit alongside moments of deep emotion: the “I’m sorry” line in “So. Central Rain”, “Letter Never Sent”, and the aching “Will she be remembered?” of “Camera”, written for Carol Levy, a photographer and friend of the band. The young woman died prematurely in a car accident, and every note of this gem, from the tender guitar passage at its center to the sound of the organ, carries that grief and transforms it into beauty.

6. Falls To Climb

A rumor went around towards the end of the '90s: R.E.M. were supposedly going to split up on December 31, 1999. If that had really happened, this soundtrack would have been the closing statement of “Up”. An ending even more decisive and explicit than the “I’m not scared/ I’m outta here” that closes “New Adventures in Hi-Fi“. Free from what, though? With that little closing march tacked onto the end of “Falls To Climb”, it wasn't crazy to think Stipe was saying goodbye, having just closed one of the most painful and heartfelt chapters of his career. The song is the soul of “Up”: the guitar enters late and stays in the background, along with the faint electronic haze, leaving Stipe's voice to dominate the scene. A swan song, cathartic and purifying.

5. The Flowers Of Guatemala

Perhaps Buck's finest solo, set within a gentle ballad with environmentalist lyrics, in which Stipe (“I’ve took a picture that I’ll have to send”) looks around him and updates his photographic diary. Photography was by then the singer's main pursuit, and in this 1986 track it feeds into a travelogue that had already begun with “Take a picture here/Take a souvenir” in “Cuyahoga”. But while the song named after the Ohio river voices anger and denunciation over man-made destruction and the treatment of Native Americans, “The Flowers Of Guatemala” describes a happy experience instead: “People here are friendly and content/ People here are colorful and bright”. Her name is Amanita (like the poisonous mushroom), but the rest is left to suggestion. The evocative line “The flowers cover everything” would later be honored – alongside “Begin The Begin”, also from “Lifes Rich Pageant” – by Matt Berninger of The National on “Not In Kansas”, from “I Am Easy To Find”.

4. Auctioneer (Another Engine)

We're deep in the Southern fables here, populated by comets and old road-sign painters scattered around Athens. “Fables” is where they sing of their land and their history, of themselves, backed by that folk-rock streaked with jarring dark undertones. In the introduction to the “Live At The Olympia” version of “Auctioneer (Another Engine)”, the frontman reveals that the song is about his maternal grandfather: a clue about this sonic riddle that only surfaced decades later, fitting neatly into the puzzle of 1985. “Auctioneer (Another Engine)” is quick and dry, its chorus arriving like a speeding vehicle slamming to a sudden halt after a mad, desperate dash. Something about the track reminds me of the urban scaffolding of Ligotti's stories, that sense of “unheimliche”, as the connoisseurs would call it, while Stipe haunts us with lines like:

Listen to the bargain holler

Listen to the barter holler

Listen to the auctioneer

3. Carnival Of Sorts (Boxcars)

The song that, more than any other, embodies “early” R.E.M. The originality, the naive madness and the sheer peculiarity of their beginnings. The sinister sound of a distant carousel forgotten in time and in nightmares, the nonsense of the lyrics, an EP split between “Chronic Town” and “Poster Torn”, where, behind the face of the gargoyle, the entire DNA of the Athens band is concentrated. “You can tell the winners at the starting gate”, as Noodles said in “Once Upon a Time in America”…

2. World Leader Pretend

The first R.E.M. song to have its lyrics printed inside the record sleeve (“Green”, 1988). A statement steeped in martial metaphors, in which Michael Stipe, having just landed with his bandmates in the major-label world and about to circle the globe on the “Green World Tour”, comes to terms with being a rock star. A role he's always inhabited in his own way, with contrarian choices and stances far removed from the usual clichés, only feeding his cult aura further. An epic, solemn passage, where every note and word seems meant to last forever. Performed live right away, during the aforementioned world tour, and on a handful of occasions afterward (“Live From Into The Night On BBC Radio 1”, 1991, documented on “R.E.M. At The BBC”), it's as if the band jealously guarded it until 2016, when a previously unreleased live version was contributed to the anti-Trump campaign organized by Dave Eggers and Jordan Kurland, “30 Days, 30 Songs”.

1. Leave

A black star fallen from the sky during the Monster Tour. If “World Leader Pretend” is the embodiment of the classic R.E.M.-style song, “Leave” is a magnificent, unhinged outlier, one that over the years has managed to become a fan favorite. Seven minutes dominated by the relentless synthesizer played by Scott McCaughey, opened by a brief, deceptive melodic intro (where you can sense the compositional touch, never quite appreciated enough, of Bill Berry) before being flattened by a crashing drum hit and Buck's guitar surge, marked by the e-bow that would give its name to the first single from the 1996 album. A disorienting, gripping opener, elevated by Stipe's voice, ready to lay out the concept running through “New Adventures in Hi-Fi”: the journey. On YouTube, a video captures the song's early form, with the band playing it during a soundcheck at the Orlando Arena. Stipe is lost in thought, singing from one of the seats, while the rest of the musicians huddle around Berry. R.E.M., at the peak of their fame and success, recorded one of their finest albums between dates on their world tour, right in the middle of a creative streak that, beyond producing great classics, also yielded passages this unclassifiable and captivating.

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05/12/2025